Are the sourcebooks really needed?

[asanyal296]

David

I have subscribed to your course and am finding that your screencasts are quite detailed along with practice spreadsheets and questions. Isn't that enough preparation? Or do you recommend reading the 70 odd original reading assignments which would take awfully long for me to read.

Thanks

Videoguy

 

[David Harper CFA FRM]

Hi Videoguy,

(Thanks for subscribing! We will take "detail" as a complement)

This is maybe the most common question we are getting this year, understandably. Our party line is "we recommend you read the assigned readings."

But, okay, our goal is definitely to make them unnecessary; e.g., especially if a customer is actually studying the spreadsheets and that candidate "arrives" with baseline quantitative proficiency , then I am confident will meet that goal (i.e., make the assignments unnecessary) for many of our customers. Clearly, we had many candiates last year who skipped the assignments and passed...

But please understand why I am not conformable saying/promoting/suggesting that either (i) all customers or (ii) the average customer can get away with skipping the assignments:

1. the dispersion in candidate aptitude/experience is very large. You might be surprised. It runs the gamut. Some candidates will need to review as much as possible, with redundancies, and spend several hundred hours. There is a segment to which, in my opinion, it is a disservice to suggest they can or should skip the time-consuming job of reading the assignments.

2. The full 2009 exam looks to be *very* difficult with the expansion

I am sorry I can't be more decisive, but i feel blanket advice is unwarranted given the diversity of candidates and the amount of material. As part of our review sessions, I am working on a "critical readings" sub-list (i.e., readings that i think are more critical than others), so I'll share as soon as possible

David